Police Minister Michael Woodhouse, Vodafone CEO Russell Stanners and Police Commissioner Mike Bush at the opening of the Mobility Innovation Lab and Experience Centre in Wellington.
Vodafone has developed the Mobility Innovation Lab and Experience Centre with the New Zealand Police.

The facility, located at a Vodafone building in Newtown, will provide a centre to foster innovation, collaboration and encourage rapid deployment of ideas and tools that support day-to-day operational policing.

This collaboration will help put the right tools and technology into frontline hands, making Police more mobile and visible to our communities and enhance police’s ability to prevent crime and reduce victimisation, says Russell Stanners, Vodafone New Zealand CEO.

As well as Vodafone and Police teams, the centre brings together key local and global partners such as Nokia (Finland), Airpoint (UK), Smudge (NZ) Intergraph (NZ/US) and BroadSoft (US).

The New Zealand Police has deployed more than 15,000 mobile devices, making it the largest private network fleet of Apple devices and the largest fleet of devices for any law enforcement agency in the world.

Stephen Crombie, executive director; information, technology and systems at New Zealand Police, says among the lessons from the deployment is to “design everything around the users, not the technology”.

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